Hunebed

Fieldnotes

Visited May 3, 2011

Hunebed D21 Bronneger, which lies below the canopy of an impressive, mature beech tree, is the most beautiful of this group of five passage graves, all situated about a kilometre west of the village of Bronneger. It is also the most important on account of the archaeological finds made there by Albert van Giffen during his thorough 1918 excavations.

At that time, the hunebed was missing one of its sidestones but, as the work progressed, the missing orthostat was discovered lying flat on the floor of the grave, a metre below ground level, and re-erected in its rightful position. In total, D21 possesses three very large capstones resting on eight sidestones and two endstones, only the tips of which peek above the surrounding sand.

Discoveries made at the site included some complete Funnelbeaker pots as well as shards of around 600 other items of pottery. The floor of the grave consisted of several layers, between 1.5 and 1.7 metres below the capstones, a height clearly designed to allow those entering the chamber to stand upright inside it, and it was between these layers that the artefacts were discovered.